All articles


  • Health

    Good news for marathoners

    Harvard researchers have found that those participating in marathons and half-marathons are not at an increased risk of cardiac arrest.

  • Campus & Community

    The Civil War’s allures, and horrors

    People are “powerfully attracted to war,” Harvard President Drew Faust told a crowd at the Cambridge Public Library on Jan. 10, and no conflict draws as much continuing interest and controversy in America as its own Civil War. The historian’s job is to balance that allure with a search for the truth, Faust said.

  • Health

    Reaping benefits of exercise minus the sweat

    A team led by researchers at Harvard-affiliated Dana-Farber Cancer Institute has isolated a natural hormone from muscle cells that triggers some of the key health benefits of exercise.

  • Campus & Community

    An adviser for global strategy

    Harvard President Drew Faust names Krishna G. Palepu, Ross Graham Walker Professor of Business Administration and senior associate dean for international development at Harvard Business School, to the new post of senior adviser to the president for global strategy.

  • Science & Tech

    Of orbits and ice ages

    In a paper published in the journal Nature, Harvard Professor of Earth and Planetary Sciences Peter Huybers confirms that changes in the orientation of the Earth’s spin axis have contributed to periods of major deglaciation in the past million years.

  • Campus & Community

    Harvard tops Dartmouth, 63-47

    The Crimson toppled Dartmouth and next take on George Washington University in a sold-out game on Jan. 14.

  • Health

    Struttin’ its stuff

    Harvard researchers have found that a tiny motor inside of us called dynein, one tasked with shuttling vital payloads throughout the cell’s intricate highway infrastructure, staggers, which is quite contrary to the regular, efficient poise of its fellow motors.

  • Campus & Community

    Music scholar, John Milton Ward, 94

    John Milton Ward, Harvard’s William Powell Mason Professor of Music from 1961 to 1985, died quietly at home in Cambridge on Dec. 12. He was 94 years old.

  • Campus & Community

    Forbes honors student innovators

    Jessica Choi ’12 and Dalumuzi Mhlanga ’13 have been named one of three winners of the 2011 College Social Innovator Contest — hosted jointly by the Harvard College Social Innovation Collaborative and the “Common Good” column at Forbes.com.

  • Health

    Nicotine letdown

    Nicotine replacement therapies did not improve smokers’ chances of long-term cessation in a study by researchers at Harvard and UMass.

  • Campus & Community

    Harvard launches city lecture series

    Harvard is launching a lecture and program series in the Boston and Cambridge public libraries. President Drew Faust will give the inaugural address of the new John Harvard Book Celebration on Jan. 10.

  • Health

    Age-related effects of MS may prove reversible

    In a new study, Harvard stem cell researchers and scientists at the University of Cambridge have found that the age-related degeneration in conditions such as multiple sclerosis (MS) may be reversible.

  • Campus & Community

    Former A.R.T. resident director dies

    David Wheeler, longtime resident director and later associate artist of the American Repertory Theater, died Jan. 4.

  • Science & Tech

    Reading life’s building blocks

    A team led by Harvard researcher Charles Lieber has for the first time succeeded in creating a device that opens the door to using tiny holes called nanopores in an electrically charged membrane to quickly and easily sequence DNA.

  • Arts & Culture

    The art of Walker Evans

    The iconic photography of Walker Evans is on exhibit at Mather House’s SNLH Three Columns Gallery through March. John T. Hill, designer and producer of the exhibition, offers special insight into Evans’ life and work.

  • Campus & Community

    Calming influence

    Stressbusters brings free back rubs to students who have neither the time nor the money for professional massage — or who simply wake up with stiff necks after long hours of study. The next Stressbusters training will be in February.

  • Campus & Community

    Preserving affordable housing

    Twenty-five affordable apartments in Harvard Square’s Craigie Arms Apartments will remain affordable for at least 50 additional years after the city of Cambridge, Harvard University, and the nonprofit Homeowners Rehab Inc. (HRI) put together a creative plan to preserve the affordability of these units through HRI’s purchase of the 50-unit Craigie Arms building.

  • Campus & Community

    The defense of Ebenezer

    A Winthrop House tradition retakes the airwaves, as WHRB rebroadcasts professor’s defense of Christmas anti-hero Ebenezer Scrooge.

  • Campus & Community

    Shareholder report available Dec. 22

    The 2011 Annual Report of the Corporation Committee on Shareholder Responsibility (CCSR), a subcommittee of the President and Fellows, will be available upon request on Dec. 22.

  • Health

    A possible aid for navigators

    John Huth, the creator of the popular “Primitive Navigation” course, spent most of last summer investigating a mysterious phenomenon called “underwater lightning,” which some say can be used as a navigational tool.

  • Campus & Community

    Prayers for the season

    The final Morning Prayers of the year at Appleton Chapel involve a message of concern and hope.

  • Science & Tech

    Alien worlds, just like home

    Harvard astronomers, working as part of NASA’s Kepler mission, have detected the first Earth-sized planets orbiting a distant star, a milestone in the hunt for alien worlds that brings scientists one step closer to their ultimate goal of finding a twin Earth.

  • Nation & World

    An echo of Harvard in New Mexico

    The purpose of the trip was to generate interest for Harvard among Native American students, as well as to host a Harvard booth at the National Indian Education Association conference in Albuquerque. For many of the high school students we visited, the Harvard name was simply an abstraction.

  • Health

    Use, abuse of Internet pharmacies

    Efforts to halt the growing abuse of prescription drugs must include addressing the availability of these drugs on the Internet and increasing physician awareness of the dangers posed by Internet pharmacies.

  • Campus & Community

    Harvard grad and HMS student are Rhodes Scholars

    Matthews Mmopi, a recent Harvard graduate from South Africa, and David Obert, a second-year Harvard Medical School (HMS) student, have been selected as 2012 Rhodes Scholars, and will join the University’s four U.S. Rhodes winners at the University of Oxford next fall.

  • Health

    Health reform in the crosshairs

    With health care costs set to gobble up more of the federal budget, analysts say that additional reforms are inevitable, though national indecision over what they should look like could mean a rocky path ahead.

  • Campus & Community

    In January, a learning smorgasbord

    Graduate students and others will be able to take part in January @ GSAS, a series of more than 80 workshops, seminars, and classes on topics that range from how to write fellowship proposals, to using online citation tools when conducting research, to social events such as film screenings and tours of Harvard museums.

  • Science & Tech

    A humanitarian comes home

    Harvard Medical School Instructor Stephanie Kayden’s educational life came full circle this semester, when she taught a humanitarian studies course in Emerson Hall, where, as an undergraduate philosophy concentrator she honed her own reasoning skills years ago.

  • Nation & World

    Lights, Camera, Reaction

    Harvard Kennedy School (HKS) students learn to master the art of a live television interview in the On-Camera Interview Basics workshop, one of many hosted by the HKS Communications Program.

  • Health

    Slowing neurodegeneration in Huntington’s

    Harvard researchers have found a treatment that increases brain levels of an important regulatory enzyme may slow the loss of brain cells that characterizes Huntington’s disease and other neurodegenerative disorders.